In his talk on product development, Ivan Gromakovskii will cover basic product management concepts we use at Serokell and things you need to take in mind when kicking off a new product.

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Product Development Basics
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Product or Project?
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Product
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Project
something that is created through
a process that benefits a market
a temporary, planned undertaking
with a defined aim
● Google Slides
● Internal knowledge base of a company
● Preparing and giving this presentation
● Planning the development of a product
● Preparing a beta release of a product

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How to spot a product?
There is no clear closure criterion, i.e. you can’t say
“We will stop working on this thing and never get
back to it once X happens”.
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Product management
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Applicability
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● Focus on software development
● But not limited to it
● Not a silver bullet

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Just-in-Time requirements
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Requirements inevitably
change over time
Do not prematurely
document them
Just enough requirements
to do what you are doing

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Product management phases
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Initiation
Planning
Execution
Support
Client → Specification
Specification → Roadmap
(Specification, Roadmap) → Artifacts
Monitoring, fixes, etc.

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● Rare switches
● Linear flow
● Frequent switches between phases
● Many versions
● Phases may proceed in parallel
Agile
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Waterfall

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How to choose
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● Certainty about requirements
● Size of the product
● Size of the team/company
● Responsiveness of the client

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Initiation phase
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Product specification
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Aim of the product. Benefits to the potential market.
Usage scenarios. Requirements
○ Functional requirements (what the system
should do).
○ Constraints (desired properties of the
solution).

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Gathering requirements
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Goal:
Understand the scope
Document it
Make the client sign everything off

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Gathering requirements
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Research the subject matter Start with usage scenarios
○ Understand the needs of the target users
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○ Look at other products addressing similar
issues
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○ Collect industry best practices
○ Get as much as possible from the client
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○ Propose your own

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Granularity
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● Enough details to get approval
● Not too detailed because JIT and need space for creativity

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Checklist
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Who will manage the repository and access to it?
Legal: copyright, license, etc.
What artifacts does the client expect in the end?
What environment (OS, etc.) should be supported?
Who and how will develop/maintain the product after
the current agreement is over?

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Sample product
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Aim
Provide a convenient way to create presentations
in a web browser.
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Benefits
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Create
presentations
without installing
anything
Share
presentations in
one click
Store
presentations
in cloud

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Usage scenarios
Alice wants to create a presentation for her lecture, she opens a web browser…
Alice wants to share her presentation with her students, she selects it…
Alice wants to edit the presentation she did a year ago.
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Requirements
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Functional Constraints
○ Duplicate a slide
○
○ Automatically save changes
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○ Export as pdf
○ Must work in Firefox, Chrome, Edge
○
○ The interface must resemble Microsoft PowerPoint

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Planning phase
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Product roadmap
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● Decomposition into milestones
● Estimated delivery dates
● May be tied to external events

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Sample product roadmap
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Initial designs are ready
Stateless version
MVP release (internal)
Public release
Milestones

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Sta ng
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Team members
Project manager
Team lead
Developers
Other specialists: infrastructure, design, etc.
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Tools
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Tools
Issue tracker
Communication channel(s)
Documentation
Repository https://github.com/serokell/metatemplates
CI/CD
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Questions
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